Anti nuclear protesters continue hunger strike in Tamil Nadu, South India

The Tamil Nadu police had imposed an illegal embargo on water, food, milk and fuel by blocking roads to pressurize protestors to give up their hunger strike against commissioning of nuclear power plant being built at Koodankulam.

Villagers, including PMANE leaders Dr. SP Udayakumar and Pushparayan are on hunger strike since four days. About eight thousand villagers have relied on basic supplies brought in through the sea on boats for the last 4 days.

CHENNAI – In a directive to the Tamil Nadu Police, the Madras High Court today ordered Police to ensure the uninterrupted access to basic amenities like electricity, food, milk and water for villagers protesting against Koodankulam nuclear power plant.

The Judges, Chief Justice EQ Iqbal and T.S Sivagnanam have reserved orders on other prayers, including lifting of Section 144 -- a prohibitory order against the gathering of more than 4 people for Monday.

Mass anti-nucle​ar rally marks a ‘turning of the tide’

 
Press release: 10 March 2012

Over 1,000 people from all over the UK converged at the main gates of EDF Energy’s Somerset power station to mark the first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster and to call for an end to the government’s ‘nuclear renaissance.’

Speaking from the demonstration, Martyn Rowe, a verteran anti-nuclear campaigner said he had not seen such a large turnout since the mass protest against the construction of the Torness nuclear power station in 1979.
He added, “It is clear that the tide is turning against the government’s push for a ‘nuclear renaissance’. The British public is waking up to the fact that ‘new nuclear’ is dangerous, expensive and completely unnecessary.”

Mr Lowe words were underlined the leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt.  Speaking at the rally he said he found it ‘unbelievable’ that nuclear energy was being put forward as a solution to climate change. And he called on the government reconsider its energy strategy.
He added: “It is clear we can do everything we need to do without nuclear power. The whole thing is being fixed to suit the nuclear industry. In Germany, they are working towards a nuclear-free future that affordable and realistic. Why is it we don’t think Germany is a really good model to follow?”
Porritt also rounded on the Liberal Democrats as they gathered for their annual conference. Referring to the LibDem u-turn on their anti-nuclear policy, he said: “It seems there is no betrayal to which they will not stoop to keep in power.”

Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, echoed Porritt’s call for an end to nuclear power in the UK. She added, “The £60 billion the government wants invested in new nuclear is £60billion that should be channelled into developing renewable energy sources and making them fit for purpose in the 21st century.”

Kate Hudson, chair of CND also called for and end to the UK’s ‘insane and criminal addiction to both nuclear power and nuclear weapons’.
The gathering at Hinkley, which included supporters from France and Taiwan, was more than double the size of the blockade of Hinkley Point held last October. Nancy Birch, spokesperson for Kick Nuclear said, “Today we have captured the public’s minds and hearts. We have heard first hand from a young Japanese couple of the desperate situation that the people of Japan are facing in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
The question we need to ask is, do we really want to put our children under threat from a similar catastrophe in the UK when there are viable alternatives to nuclear power at our disposal?”

Nuclear Secrets

By TOM NEWTON DUNN, Political Editor

Published: 17th February 2012

A HEALTH and safety boss has lost a secret report on a nuclear power station — that could find its way into the hands of terrorists.

The extraordinary blunder is a deep embarrassment to the Government — with the PM planning to talk up nuclear safety TODAY.
The "stress test" report into weaknesses at the Hartlepool plant was illicitly downloaded on to a USB memory stick and then mislaid while the official was at a nuclear conference in India.
It contained sensitive technical details and maps of the power station.
The loss was considered so serious that ministers were immediately informed.
The culprit was a senior inspector at the Health and Safety Executive, working for one of its agencies, the Office for Nuclear Regulation. Last night an ONR spokesman said: "The use of unencrypted USB pen drives is not permitted by ONR for transporting documents with a security classification."
Action has been taken against the inspector but last night the Health and Safety Executive refused to say whether he was still employed by them.

'Stress test' ... Hartlepool nuclear power station

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint said: "The safety of the UK's nuclear industry is of paramount importance. It is extremely disturbing that sensitive information about a UK nuclear power station has been lost overseas. I will be urgently writing to the Energy Secretary to get answers."
The latest in a series of data loss blunders is revealed as David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy share a platform in Paris today to champion nuclear power to Europe's doubters.

Concerned ... Caroline Flint

At the Anglo-French summit, they will announce how their governments will work together on civil nuclear projects and safety initiatives. But in a further shaming for British diplomats in Paris, the Hartlepool plant is owned by FRENCH firm EDF.
All of Britain's ten operating nuclear power stations were ordered to carry out the urgent safety tests following the Fukushima disaster in Japan 11 months ago. Hartlepool is one of the biggest.
Last night an EDF spokeswoman said any safety or security concerns sparked by the data stick loss were not "significant".
The ONR also insisted the stick had no "significantly" sensitive information on it. But officials confirmed the full report — later published in redacted form — is not the sort of thing they want in the public domain.

DECC's nuclear cops spend £1m on weapons, ammo... and a new tank

by ClickGreen staff. Published Sat 11 Feb 2012 12:00, Last updated: 2012-02-11

£78.5 million bill to guard nuclear energy sites

A DECC quango has spent over £1 million on stockpiling weapons, ammunition and vehicles as it guards the nation's civil nuclear energy sites against attack.

The shocking figures were discovered within an annual budget of nearly £80 million that is operated by the eight-man Civil Nuclear Police Authority.

The panel was set up in 2004 to govern the work of the UK's Nuclear Police Constabulary but because it's a quango, it's spending is not scrutinised in the normal way by the National Audit Office but by accountancy firm KPMG.

The vast spending bill, which includes £14,000 for bottled water, is underwritten by DECC but paid for by the nuclear energy industry, which in turn is recovered through consumers' bills.

Analysis of the accounts, shows that the £14k water bill is part of a larger £781,000 spend on “subsistence” - and the overall 25-year cost for providing round-the-clock armed protection is more than double the entire Feed-in Tariff budget.

According to the CNPA's latest set of accounts, the authority this year has an annual budget of £78.5 million, which it uses to pass on to the nuclear site police force it independently governs.

The Nuclear Constabulary is responsible solely for safeguarding civil nuclear energy locations and material and is not involved in defence-related work and the majority of its officers are allowed to carry weapons as Authorised Firearms Officers.

As part of its remit, the agency is required to recover its full operating costs from the licensed operators of the UK's civil nuclear locations.

The audited accounts reveal the costs incurred last year by the police squad include £174,000 for an armoured vehicle, £674,000 for 22 replacement vehicles and £613,000 for a new control room.

The DECC-run body says it has “committed additional funds to increasing tactical and marksmanship skills” and its budget reveals around £435,000 was spent last year on weapons, spares and ammunition.

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince told GreenWeek the budget highlighted the recent differences exploited between the nuclear and green energy industries.

He added: "With plenty of talk recently from the pro nuclear, anti renewables lobby, about the hidden costs of green energy - it's interesting to note that we Britons stump up some £80 million a year to 'protect' nuclear sites - to the UK's Nuclear Police Constabulary - yes they have their own Police force.

“That sum is of course dwarfed by the nearly £3 billion a year being spent right now on the clean up of nuclear waste - something set to continue for the next hundred years or so.

“Compared to that the costs of green energy support are truly microscopic... and no policemen required of course."

Full story can be found at: http://epub02.publitas.com/ClickGreen/8/

India's Nuclear Madness: 560 Million at Risk

Arun Shrivastava Salem-News.com   Feb-02-2012 10:43
http://www.salem-news.com/  

Narora nuclear power plant is 93 kilometers east of Delhi; Tarapur and Madras stations are closer to Bombay and Chennai, respectively.

(NEW DELHI, India) - When mad men and women run the world, to be sane is dangerous. An American psychologist Dr. Harvey Cleckley, professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Medical College of Georgia, wrote ‘The Mask of Sanity’ published in 1941. In this book Dr. Cleckley talks of psychopathic personalities, humans that are without conscience. But we are confronted with men and women who decimate societies; they are not  psychopaths who kill a few individuals; they are sociopaths who kill entire societies.
The Indian Government operates 20 nuclear reactors at seven locations in India; the contentious Koodankulum has yet to go critical. These are located in northern, western and southern parts of  India in an arc of nuclear apocalypse. The reactors operate under ‘OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT,’ colonial India's anti-espionage act to protect and preserve British annexation of India, that states that one cannot approach, inspect, or even pass over a prohibited government site or area. The nuclear reactors operate on prohibited government area and hence common citizens are barred from entering, inspecting or even asking the questions from the forecourt attendant.
India is 1/3 the size of the USA with three times as many people; nine times as densely populated as the USA.  These reactors are all located close to densely populated urban regions and close to natural water bodies like rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Fukushima or Chernobyl in India
Let us assume the worst case scenario that one of these stations with their cluster of encased bombs blows up a la Fukushima. Note that the Japanese Government has behaved in the most criminal manner by withholding information from its people. They had known the consequences and had prepared an evacuation plan for Tokyo last year. Now, Tokyo is about 206 kilometers from Fukushima.
Narora nuclear power plant is 93 kilometers east of Delhi; Tarapur and Madras stations are closer to Bombay and Chennai, respectively.
In case of a major accident in any of the stations, 26 to 154 million people will be affected or need to be evacuated. {Table 1] Over half a billion are endangered living on borrowed time.
Table 1 Nuclear power stations Population within 250 kilometer radius
1 Narora Atomic Power Station   154,252,500
2 Rajasthan Atomic Power Station  39,250,000
3 Tarapur Atomic Power Station  118,044,375
4 Kakrapar Atomic Power Station   54,753,750
5 Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant   80,462,500
6 Madras Atomic Power Station   89,097,500
7 Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant   25,905,000
Grand total  561,765,625
Data from Chernobyl suggests that vast swathe of lands will remain uninhabitable for at least 600 years. Pripyat city remains highly radioactive today, no one can live there. Where the millions living in Delhi, Bombay or Chennai would be relocated? Can India afford the cost of 40-50 million mega city relocation?
We know that no reactor is safe and they all leak low level radiation. Most vulnerable are people downwind of the reactors. But we in India have both easterly and westerly, strong surface winds. So people all around are continuously exposed to low dosing of radiation. Is it causing the massive growth in abortions, pre-mature births, birth defects and an explosive growth in diabetes and cancers among the adults? Or, is the low dosing making us healthier as claimed by post-Fuku Japanese Government shills and Indian and American perps? The people will soon know and then rat holes will be in short supply.

New energy secretary’s appointment underlines unhealthy relationshipbetween government and nuclear sector

Anti-nuclearcampaigners have slammed the decision to appoint Ed Davey as the new Energy andClimate Change Secretary as further evidence of the unhealthily closerelationship between the government and the nuclear energy sector.


Campaign group,Kick Nuclear, has learned that Davey’s brother, Henry, is a partner at HerbertSmith, a law firm that has a long-standing relationship with the nuclear giantEDF Energy. Herbert Smith’s website declares that it is, ‘proud to be at thevanguard of next generation nuclear in the UK’.


Kick Nuclearspokesperson, Nancy Birch, said EDF Energy’s official and unofficial influencewithin government is extremely worrying. She said: ‘Davey’s brother advised EDFon trading contracts relating to the company’s acquisition of British Energy in2008.  Herbert Smith has sinceworked with EDF to gain development consent for the construction and operationof a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Only yesterday EdDavey made a dramatic U-turn by declaring he is now pro-nuclear. The connectionwith his brother’s professionals interests is simply too close for comfort.’


It is becomingincreasingly clear that the nuclear sector  - and EDF Energy in particular – has an excessive influenceon the energy agenda both within Whitehall and Westminster. An independentreport launched last week by Unlock Democracy and The Association for theConservation of Energy, claims the government’s own data has been skewed tosupport the ‘new nuclear’ option. The report concludes: ‘Either it’s amonumental series of mistakes or the ‘nuclear lobby’ has got control of theWhitehall machine.’


Since the lastgeneral election, EDF executives have met government ministers on six occasionsto discuss energy policy and related issues. Only last June, The Guardiannewspaper accused government officials of colluding with nuclear companies,including EDF Energy, to play down the effects of the Fukushima nuclearaccident in Japan.


Anti-nuclearcampaigners’ concerns were also heightened during Gordon Brown’s premiership whenit transpired that his brother, Andrew, was head of EDF’s media strategy. Kick Nuclear isnow calling for an independent inquiry into the nuclear lobby’s influence onenergy policy.  Nancy Birchconcluded: ‘There is growing evidence that the ‘new nuclear’ option is neithersafe nor affordable. It’s time for the public to stand up and say we don’t buythe nuclear greenwash. Germany is showing that we can have a nuclear-freefuture that is affordable and environmentally sound. New nuclear will takeinvestment away from truly renewable forms of energy and drag us backward intonuclear dependence.’

The ten most radioactive places on earth

http://brainz.org/ten-most-radioactive-places-earth/